Traditionally, search engines have employed a number of ranking features to improve search experiences for users and to improve ranking of Web pages. These ranking features may include search engine user signals such as user clicks on search results or advertisements, impressions delivered, query logs, and user session history (uniform resource locator streams). These search engine user signals are used to improve search experiences for users, but the ranking features are often skewed in favor of high frequency queries (so-called “head queries”) and fail to take into account those queries that occur at a lower frequency.
Ranking features may also include Web content consumption signals which give an indication of how users behave on a particular Web page other than a search engine page. Some examples of consumption signals include user responses to questions on a forum, user “likes,” “rates,” “shares,” and tweets. Additionally, ranking features may include publisher signals. These signals are supplied by the owner of a Web page or domain and typically provide information about the Web page or domain. The information may concern the layout of the Web page, textual information as embodied in the content of a Web page, and the overall structure of the domain. This information, especially the textual information on a Web page, may be used to rank the Web page on a search engine results page. For example, once a user enters a query, the search engine searches for Web pages having textual elements that match terms in the query. Web pages having a greater number of matches are ranked higher than Web pages having a lower number of matches.
One type of publisher signal of note is breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs serve several functions. For instance, breadcrumbs help domain owners to arrange Web pages in a logical fashion. They also help to provide a user an overall context of any given Web page with respect to the entire domain. As a navigational tool, breadcrumbs provide a description of the trail that a user has taken to arrive at a Web page within a domain. The trail is typically published near the top of the Web page underneath the title bar. One example of a breadcrumb trail is “U.S.>Missouri>Kansas City.” Thus, the user entered the domain at the “U.S.” page, then navigated to the “Missouri” page, and then navigated to the “Kansas City” page. The different breadcrumb elements are selectable and enable the user to navigate to other interesting pages. Breadcrumbs provide a wealth of information about a domain and relationships between different Web pages within the domain. This information can be used to improve searching experiences for users and to improve ranking of Web pages.